Fire department officials seized 25-30 cooking gas cylinders that had exploded and handed them over to the Samta Nagar police for further investigations.

Gusty winds fuelled the fire and resulted in its rapid spread. According to reports, more than 50 per cent of the shanties had an average of two gas cylinders.

The incident once again highlighted the unsafe living conditions present in the slums. The haphazard arrangement of shanties with very little space between adjacent huts, loose electrical connections, no proper structures, illegal storage of gas cylinders without any safety precautions, etc. made the slum areas more susceptible to accidents and human loss.

Online food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy on Monday said it would use privately-run ICICI Bank to allow its delivery fleet to make digital payments.

“Through the use of Unified Payment Interface (UPI)-based solution for instant fund transfers and automated cash deposit machines at ICICI Bank branches and ATMs across the country, the delivery fleet will have a hassle-free way of transferring funds,” the company said in a statement. Swiggy operates with a fleet of over 20,000 delivery persons delivering food from over 25,000 restaurants across 12 cities.

With cash-on-delivery being a widely used method of payment on the platform, the digital payment methods allow the delivery men to quickly transfer the funds to Swiggy, saving their time, according to the statement.

“With the delivery fleet being the backbone of Swiggy, the adoption of the digital payment solutions will support the ease of operations and save their time and thousands of kilometres of travel,” said the company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Rahul Bothra in the statement. The digital payment methods will also help in preventing any cash leakages, the company said.

Founded in 2014, Swiggy aims to “change the way India eats” and is currently operational in cities like New Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai among a few others. IANS